


Girl Became a Man

by wickedblackbird



Series: Deanna Winchester [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Introspection, girl!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 11:42:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedblackbird/pseuds/wickedblackbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a girl!Dean (Deanna) fic - as in, Dean was born a girl instead of a boy. John Winchester looks at his now adult daughter and wonders when Deanna became Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girl Became a Man

When he and Mary had sat in the hospital, smiling down at the miracle of their first child, he had seen wonderful things in that tiny girl's future. He'd pictured dresses and dolls, a little girl smiling and calling him 'daddy', asking him to tea parties with teddy bears. He'd pictured a girl with big dimples and pigtails helping her mother in the kitchen, humming idly, and laughing at being teased about boys. He could see himself threatening future boyfriends, laughing at prom dresses and walking her down the aisle. It was a lovely image, and he had smiled at his girls - his lovely, lovely girls - and kissed the top of each of their heads.

They named her Deanna, after his mother. Deanna. Three lovely syllables that flowed gently from the tongue as they sang to her and read stories to her night after night.

The baby grew to be a little girl, dimples and pigtails just as he'd known she would have, who asked a million questions and smiled at everything. When little Sammy came along, it felt as though everything were complete - his family perfect. There was a little girl to be like Mary, and a boy to be like him, and life was wonderful.

The fire that took his wife burned his picture-perfect ideas to the same pile of ashes.

He can't remember the day when the questions faded. She so easily fell into the routine of a soldier, listened to instructions and carried out orders. Three syllables became one, because 'Dean' was so much easier to bark out as a warning, a sound said tersely in the rigid quiet of their structure. Games and stories became drills and research, and a little girl with close-cropped hair learned to field-strip weapons, to fight and destroy, and above all - to protect. Somehow, his little girl became a boy because that was what he needed in his crusade. The boy, as all boys do, became a man and that man was a soldier.

Many things passed that way, beyond his notice because he was so focused. He knows she went through puberty, because she grew, but he heard nothing of it - no questions, no mistakes, it just happened. She learned to drive, he's not sure when, and they share beer and coffee and endless lewd jokes. They play pool and poker between hunts to make money, and hunt with the fierce fire of all wild things. She teases her brother as he grows, prank wars that are as sudden and complete as any part of the war they have belonged to for years, and protects him with every breathe, because it's second nature.

It registered a long time ago that perhaps this wasn't right, and Jim had been more than ready to voice disapproval, but Dean has proved time and again to be a first-rate hunter, so it didn't matter. The hunt went on - John Winchester and his boys against all the evil bastards of the world.

It was Caleb that finally made him remember that Dean had once been Deanna. They had been tracking down a poltergeist in a town not far from Bobby's junkyard, and stopped in for a break once the job was finished, for the spirit had put up a fight and they were tired. Sam - not Sammy for a few months now - had disappeared to study Bobby's books within a few minutes of climbing out of the back seat of the Impala. One less worry for him, because things between John and his youngest were tense, to say the least. He and Dean had shaken hands with Bobby, been happy to see that Caleb was staying for a few days as well. It wasn't often that they saw the few allies, friends, that they'd managed to make.

Bobby had found some situations that reminded him of Mary, and John had spent several hours pouring over signs with him around the kitchen table. When he had come out onto the porch hours later, he had been surprised. Dean and Caleb were sitting side by side in the old chairs, booted feet on the railing, drinking beer and laughing - flirting. And it occurred to him that he had never entertained the thought of such a thing, never thought of another hunter seeing her that way. Yet... why not?

For the first time since Mary's death, he found himself really looking at his daughter, and he realized she was beautiful. She had grown into a confident, capable woman, and he had never noticed. He wonders if she had ever wanted those dolls and dresses and tea parties, if he would have cared if she had. He wonders how many boys, or girls for all he knows, have been taken in by those eyes, by the long legs and smoothly powerful grace. Most of all, he wonders if she resents him for the loss of the little girl.

There had been no chance for questions that night - Dean had caught his eye and grinned, offered him a beer. He and Bobby had joined the two younger hunters in conversation, and even Sam had eventually come out to sit on the porch with them. There had been more laughter and jokes, a welcome rest on a perfect summer evening, and it had once more been the men relaxing from the hunt. 

The thought had faded from his mind, because there was a war to be fought and Dean was his second-in-command. He needs his army in working order, now more than ever. But, every now and then, he sees something that reminds him that his eldest son is a daughter, and he wonders.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a few girl!Dean stories back around the time the third season aired.


End file.
